Slavery and the Ancient Greeks

At least as early as the 600s BCE, societies around the Black Sea sold slaves to Greek traders in exchange for luxury goods such as wine and clothing. Many of theses slaves came from Asia Minor, Colchis (today Georgia) and Thrace (today Bulgaria and northeastern Greece). Frequent warring in these areas had created an abundant slave supply, and children sold by desperate parents were part of the supply.

Nell Irvin Painter writes that "No shame attended this brutal business." She mentions a Macedonian slave trader whose gravestone had a carved image of eight slaves chained together by their necks. (The History of White People, p 13.)

In Drako's Athens (620 BCE), fellow Greeks were sold into slavery as payment of debts. The Greeks also might sell a child -- more likely a girl than a boy. Boys were valued more for their ability to do labor.

Greek elites were inclined to judge poor common folk as innately servile, which mitigated disdain they might have for parents selling their children into slavery. But Herodotus, according to Nell Painter, scolded the Thracians for selling their children for export. (p. 14)

It is reported that in Greece were infants that parents left exposed to die but who were scooped up by profit seekers and sold. There was kidnapping to acquire a slave for sale. And there were those who had been born into slavery -- the children of slaves and considered the property of the slave master.

Female slaves are described as being prohibited from keeping their children, and Infants born of master-servant liaisons were destroyed.

Greeks tended to view those of an ethnicity other than their own as barbarian, and they might excuse slavery on ethnicity grounds. But the biology of race was not yet a well developed category or concept.

The purchase cost of a slave depended on the slave's appearance, age and attitude. The healthy, young, attractive and submissive fetched more money. If there was a scarcity of slaves on the market their price increased -- one of the earlier matters for economists to ponder.

Slaves were treated differently according to their purpose. The best treated tended to be household servants. Female slaves were household servants, working at bread baking, cooks, had more specialized roles to fulfil, such as housekeeper, cook, nurse or as textile maker, and an unofficial service might include sexuality.

Slaves were supervised by the woman of the house and expected to keep the slaves busy. Only the poorest Athenian family citizens had no domestic slave.

Some domestic slaves were treated almost as if they were a member of the family. Women might become close to their slaves in compensation for their segregation from public affairs and from social gatherings with male guests in their own homes. The only public area in which women were allowed to participate was religion, and slave women were allowed to participate in some religious affairs.

Enslaved men were more likely to work in the fields, industrial workshops, as craftsmen or tradesmen or aboard ships at sea -- especially as muscle in the city-state's navy. Slaves served as assistants to Greek hoplite (spear-carrying) warriors. A wealthy private citizen might lease slaves to work in a mine or quarry. Athens, according to Nell Irvin Painter, employed between 300 and 1,000 Scythian slaves as policemen. (p. 13)

Slaves were assigned names by their master and not allowed to use their own names.

Walking about town or going on a military campaign, an Athenian aristocrat usually was accompanied by a slave or two.